Fireball Rips Through Siberian Sky In Brilliant Display Of Light

"Frankly, I was scared. I thought that it was a bomb," one witness said.

A strange display of light blazed across the Siberian night sky early this week, according to witnesses in the area. The fireball’s stunning display created a moment of daylight for people in the Khakassia region of Russia.

Although NASA doesn’t have independent confirmation of the event, Paul Chodas, manager of their Near-Earth Object office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the dazzling streak could be explained by a “really tiny asteroid hitting the atmosphere.”

“It looks to me to be real,” he told The Huffington Post. “This would be a fireball ― that’s a large, bright meteor.”

Witness Olga Sagalakova described her terrifying experience to RT, an English-language news outlet funded by the Russian government.

“At first, I couldn’t understand what’s going on. There was a sudden luminescence. It wasn’t as light as day, but still quite bright,” she said. “Frankly, I was scared. I thought that it was a bomb.”